Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [134]
Hunter would need two experienced detectives—officers who could be objective. He wanted at least one of them to look at the case from the point of view of the defense.
Tom Haney, recently retired from the patrol division of the Denver PD, was an obvious candidate. In his twenty-eight years on the force, he had investigated many of the city’s most notorious murders. Haney met with Hunter and Hofstrom and then with Eller and Koby. They told him they were looking for someone with investigative experience who could handle the transition from investigation to prosecution. Haney said he could. Eller asked Haney his opinion of Lou Smit. “He’s a hell of a guy and a great investigator,” Haney said. “And he’s solved some tough cases.”
Smit was a legend among law enforcement personnel. Formerly captain of detectives in the El Paso County sheriff’s office, he’d worked 150 homicide cases in Colorado Springs. Smit had recently solved a three-and-a-half-year-old kidnapping by matching a lone fingerprint, which had been overlooked, to one in a regional fingerprint database. At sixty-one, Smit had kept up with cutting-edge technology while retaining some tried-and-true methods. Once, he had sifted through a hundred bags of garbage to look for evidence that tied a murderer to his victim. Maggots crawled up his sleeves, but he found the critical evidence. Like a lot of dedicated officers, he’d been seen praying at victims’ graves. He said that God was his partner.
Hunter discussed Haney and Smit with Koby and with Trip DeMuth, who felt that Smit was less pushy than Haney. Detective Tom Trujillo told Chief Koby that Lou Smit was their kind of cop. Koby decided that Smit would do, and Hunter agreed.
Coincidentally, Hal Haddon, one of John Ramsey’s lawyers, asked Haney to join their team. Haney had never worked on the defense side, and he had some concerns, but he met with Patrick Burke nonetheless. Patsy’s attorney said he believed that John and Patsy were innocent. Moreover, he said, their investigation had uncovered possible suspects.
“I’m not sure I could rule the Ramseys out,” Haney told him.
“They’ll sit down with you,” Burke replied. “They’ll answer all your questions.”
Haney wanted to ask if the Ramseys had taken a polygraph, but he decided it would be rude. The next day, Haney called Burke and declined the job. He just had that feeling in his gut.
On March 13, Smit agreed to work for Hunter. That same day the DA walked upstairs to the sheriff’s office and asked Epp to lend him Steve Ainsworth for his investigation. The detective and deputy DA Trip DeMuth had a good working relationship. They had solved a murder case together in nearby Louisville. Ainsworth had worked on the Ramsey case the first weekend after the murder, and he was eager to rejoin the investigation. Epp was disturbed that Steve wouldn’t be doing any interviewing, however. That privilege had been reserved for Eller’s detectives. Instead, Ainsworth would remain in the office, where he would review material from the point of view of the defense, as Hunter’s devil’s advocate.
Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth formally joined Hunter’s team on March 17. The first order of business for Smit was to introduce himself to the Ramseys. He wrote them a letter saying that he’d been hired by Alex Hunter to find the killer of their daughter and that any help that they could give him would be appreciated. It was his way of building a bridge to the Ramseys. The better he knew them, Smit maintained, the greater chance he would have of helping to solve the murder. Weeks later he received word that his letter was appreciated.
That same afternoon, Smit and Ainsworth began examining a list of suspects the police might not have investigated fully. One name caught their eyes—Kevin Raburn.
A Colorado Department of Corrections investigator, Steve McLaury, had called the Boulder PD on February 19 about a former inmate, Kevin Raburn, who was discharged from a Colorado prison just 200 miles from Boulder a week before the murder of JonBenét. Joan Wise, the counselor who had handled